Summary:

WOODSTOCK, the Academy Award winning documentary of the massive 1969 rock festival, has been rereleased in a nearly four hour Director's Cut with a re-mastered digital soundtrack. The visuals and sound remain impressive, but this celebration of adolescent rebellion proves to be more amusing than profound and more sad than festive. Foul language, drug use and nudity are present throughout, along with the sense that one is watching the onset of a national decline.

Review:

WOODSTOCK, the Academy Award winning documentary of the massive 1969 rock festival, has been re-released in a longer Director's Cut version with a newly-re-mastered digital soundtrack. What is comical in this sprawling (nearly four hour) rock-umentary are the trappings of rebellion that now look so quaint: the two-fingered gestures, the peace symbols, wildly painted buses, headbands, long fringe, bell-bottoms, granny glasses, unruly hair, and pass‚ expressions: "far out," "groovy," "out-a-sight," etc. etc. How odd and outdated all of this looks now, after just two and a half decades. However, more profoundly troubling is that the colossal adolescent rebellion of the late 1960s, which this event epitomized, became canonized and deeply rooted in our culture. While the flower children may now use cellular phones, a huge number of them have brought their moral anarchy into the corridors of power. The consequences for our country have been disastrous.

The visuals and sound in WOODSTOCK remain impressive, but this celebration of a generation's adolescent rebellion proves to be more amusing than profound and more sad than festive. Foul language, drug use and nudity are present throughout, along with the sense that one is watching the onset of a national decline.